Old time gamer here, haven’t played anything recent in years. Picked up a deck with the sale and looking to pick up a “premium” game. So far I am going back and forth between
Cyberpunk 2077
FFVII Remake
No Man’s Sky
I am not a huge fan of shooters and I know these three have more of an action gameplay style. I have Skyrim which I have played a tad on PC and could see myself playing that on the deck.
What I’d like is something I can pick up and play for an hour or less and put back down for a few days.
Things I’d love in a game
some level of replayability / open world content to mess around with
good story
good ambience / music
And obviously something that plays decent on the deck.
I am leaning on Cyberpunk even with reading and watching mixed-to-negative reviews.
Cyberpunk is still pretty flawed and has issues and you'll get less battery life though it's a lot better now than at launch and certainly playable
FFVII Remake is only half of the original FFVII, so you'll end on a cliff hanger and be waiting for the continuation
No Man's Sky started with tons of issues but is now really content filled and open and polished and at this point pretty well liked
Based on those, I would lean towards No Man's Sky since it has the least amount of concerns (in my opinion).
But if you just want a good story, NieR: Replicant and NieR: Automata are amazing and worth checking out (we have a Lemmy at !nier@lemm.ee) and I'd just really recommend it for the plot alone. Both are on sale and run pretty well, and Replicant is the first game while Automata is the sequel, and opinions heavily vary on which is better on story since they are both fantastic but Automata is more polished. They're also both standalone, so you can play in either order, though I'll always recommend Replicant first. They aren't perfect games but will nail the music and plot, as those are the things most highly praised about them. They're also very depressing!
Rain World isn't AAA but it certainly feels premium and I'd recommend it if you want a really beautiful and interesting open world, but be warned that it's incredibly hard. It's not a game for everybody but it's really amazing and I think it's worth mentioning because the world is huge. Great music there too!
Got a couple of mates playing Cyberpunk for the first time at the minute and it still seems pretty janky.
I think for me, no matter how much they improve it, it will never be the game they originally said it would be. I was expecting a branching open ended rpg in a simulated world and instead we just got sci-fi themed GTA.